Communications of the ACM
Technology Workers Are Young (really Young)
The median age of all U.S. workers is 42.3 years, while technology industry workers are significantly younger, on average.
Credit: M.Galetto/Santa Clara University
Technology industry employees are significantly younger, on average, than those in the workforce overall, according to PayScale, which recently conducted a study to determine the median age of workers at many of the most successful companies in the technology industry, as well as information on gender and years of experience.
Just six of the 32 companies in the study had a median age greater than 35 years old, and eight of the companies had a median employee age of 30 years old or younger. The overall median age of U.S. workers is 42.3 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The technology companies with the youngest workers are Epic Games, Facebook, Zynga, Google, AOL, Blizzard Entertainment, InfoSys, and Monster.com. The technology companies with the oldest workers include Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, Nokia, Dell, and Sony.
"The firms that are growing or innovating around new areas tend to have younger workers," says PayScale's Katie Bardaro.
She notes that a key factor is the type of skills an employee offers. "Baby Boomers and Gen Xers tend to know C# and SQL," Bardaro says. "Gen Y knows Python, social media, and Hadoop."
From The New York Times
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